Focus on swarm behav­ior and heart healing – Hector Science Awards go to Iain Couzin and Stefanie Dimmeler

Prof. Dr. Iain Couzin and Prof. Dr. Stefanie Dimmeler are this year's laure­ates of the Hector Foundation's Science Award, which is endowed with €200,000 each. The jury is honor­ing the outstand­ing research achieve­ments of the British biolo­gist, who studies the mecha­nisms of collec­tive behav­ior at the Univer­sity of Konstanz and the Max Planck Insti­tute for Behav­ioral Biology, and the biolo­gist and biochemist, who is devel­op­ing new ways to repair damaged hearts at Goethe Univer­sity Frankfurt.

Prof. Dr. Iain D. Couzin FRS is Direc­tor at the Max Planck Insti­tute for Behav­ioral Biology and Profes­sor of Biodi­ver­sity and Collec­tive Behav­ior at the Univer­sity of Konstanz. He is also spokesper­son for the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collec­tive Behav­ior at the Univer­sity of Konstanz, which is funded by the German Research Founda­tion (DFG). He is inter­na­tion­ally recog­nized as one of the leading experts on collec­tive animal behav­ior and inves­ti­gates how simple behav­ioral rules of individ­ual animals result in aston­ish­ingly complex patterns in groups. With the help of automated track­ing, computer-assisted image analy­sis, theoret­i­cal models—such as the so-called “Couzin model”—and robot­ics, he and his team are able to precisely quantify the dynam­ics of fish shoals and insect colonies in the labora­tory and in natural environ­ments. Iain Couzin's research is exemplary for the estab­lish­ment of modern quanti­ta­tive behav­ioral biology and for a lasting contri­bu­tion to the under­stand­ing of collec­tive systems.

Prof. Dr. Stefanie Dimmeler is Profes­sor of Molec­u­lar Cardi­ol­ogy at Goethe Univer­sity Frank­furt and Chair of the German Center for Cardio­vas­cu­lar Research (DZHK), as well as spokesper­son for the DFG-funded Cluster of Excel­lence Cardio-Pulmonary Insti­tute. She is one of the most inter­na­tion­ally renowned researchers in the field of cardio­vas­cu­lar diseases and is one of Germany's most highly cited scien­tists across all disci­plines. Her research inves­ti­gates the cellu­lar and molec­u­lar mecha­nisms that contribute to the loss of heart and vascu­lar cells – for example, after a heart attack – and how these can be used to develop new regen­er­a­tive thera­pies. A partic­u­lar focus of her work is on non-coding RNAs—small “switches” in our cells that control which genes are active—and on the body's own repair mecha­nisms for damaged tissue. Stefanie Dimmler's work impres­sively demon­strates how findings from molec­u­lar research can be trans­lated into concrete clini­cal appli­ca­tions and incor­po­rated into the devel­op­ment of clini­cal diagno­sis and therapy concepts.

The execu­tive board of the Hector Founda­tion and previ­ous award winners gathered at the Hotel Europäis­cher Hof in Heidel­berg for the award ceremony on Friday, January 30, 2026. Founder Dr. h.c. Hans-Werner Hector welcomed the two new award winners to the circle of 34 Hector Fellows, who are jointly commit­ted to inter­dis­ci­pli­nary cutting-edge research in Germany.